Review: Garmin Forerunner Watch – is it accurate?

I’ve been using the Garmin Forerunner 305 running watch for about 6 months, and I give it fairly high marks. For years I used the trusty Timex Ironman Triathlon watches, and the built-in GPS is a huge step up, along with the heart-rate monitor strap, and the data transfer to your PC.

Compared to my mythical “perfect watch” – which does not exist – there are a few anomalies in the watch and in the accompanying software that could be improved.

My most recent discovery is that it might not be as accurate as I had imagined – considering it uses highly accurate space satellites and all that technology. Here are my observations:

A Better Commander-in-Chief?

Say what you will about George W. Bush, but following September 11, 2001, he took whatever steps he felt necessary – with the consent of both parties in Congress – to secure and defend our country.   The record shows that he was successful;   we were not attacked again while he was in office.

Three news stories today painted a disturbing picture of our new Commander-in-Chief’s program:

1. Medvedev Announces Plan to Rearm Russia

2. Gates readies Big Cuts in Weapons

3. Obama might make wounded vets pay for treatment

Read them carefully – they may chart our country’s new direction. Each article sheds a little light on the “Obama Way”, which sadly reminds me of a world leader during the 1930’s.

Two Presidents – One Marine Corps

I have a high regard for marines and the Marine Corps.
The vast majority of marines consider their honor one of
their greatest possessions, and they highly value courage,
loyalty, and achievement – that whole “getting it done!” thing.

They say there are no “former marines” – you are a Marine for
life (with the exception of Jack Murtha – see notes at the end),
and their assessment and evaluation of the character of an
individual is based on what that person does, not what he
or she says.

Thus you might find the following YouTube video
informative, if not instructive.  It shows the response of
marines to our current and former presidents:
Marines’ receptions of the two presidents.

Of course, if you are one of the unenlightened folks who
think that Marines are close relatives of Neanderthals,
then their evaluation may not impress, but it carries a
certain weight with me.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds of  Instapundit, and Roger
Kimball of Roger’s Rules for pointing me to the video.
Other bloggers who filed similar stories were
Gateway Pundit and The Astute Bloggers.

Notes:
John “Jack” Murtha is the despicable Pennsylvania congressman
who verbally tried and convicted the Haditha marines of
war crimes, while deflecting investigation into his own misdeeds.
He initially avoided some investigations back in 2004/2005  by
changing sides and coming out in opposition to the Iraq war,
after having initially supported it.  Thus any prosecutions would
have had the appearance of retaliation, and so he seemed to benefit
greatly by this change of position.   There are many vets and
marines that are disgusted with Murtha, and consider him,
along with Lee Harvey Oswald, to be an “Ex-Marine.”
There is much info about him on the web;  some of it is gathered
here.

An Inconvenient Global Hypocrite

Al Gore has never been one of my favorite people. At times pompous, arrogant and yet often clueless, he is simply a politician, not a scientist, and his college grades proved the point.

Ironically, he received his lowest grade, a D, in Natural Sciences, had very poor showings in higher-level math classes, and avoided courses in logic – all of which made him spectacularly unqualified to render evaluations and judgments on possible causes of warming in the complex biosphere of the earth.

In addition to all of these, one must note a level of hypocrisy that is almost stunning in its magnitude, although predictably common among the “man-made global warming” crowd. These are the folks who parade the gospel of limiting consumption, cutting back world economies, and reducing human activities in the name of saving the planet. Yet they constantly scoot around the world in private jets, limousines and yachts, using a far larger “eco-footprint”, and creating far more “greenhouse gases”, than dozens or hundreds of ordinary folks.

They bring new meaning to the phrase “Do as I say, not as I do!”

A trenchant example off this is shown in the following e-mail that has been circulating for over a year now, which compares the choices in housing made by two very high profile citizens of the USA:

The coming Global Cooling?

Much as I don’t want to focus on a single topic, I have had very little time to post recently, and an e-mail just arrived with some very interesting info. It was chain-forwarded, but appears to have originated with Mark Duchamp of the Iberica.org institute.

I’ll reproduce the e-mail in full – there are some links that provide additional info if you care to follow them up.

You be the judge – but the evidence seems to be mounting that man-made global warming is a myth that has achieved widespread acceptance as “conventional wisdom”, but is nonetheless a myth!

The e-mail is contained in full after the break.

Russia’s outloook on Global Warming

Even the Russians are starting to think that man-made global warming (AGW – antropogenic global warming) is not the threat that the media and Al Gore have made it out to be. (and James Hansen at NOAA as well).

Here’s an excerpt from today’s Pravda (Jan 11, 2009):

The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years.

Ice cores, ocean sediment cores, the geologic record, and studies of ancient plant and animal populations all demonstrate a regular cyclic pattern of Ice Age glacial maximums which each last about 100,000 years, separated by intervening warm interglacials, each lasting about 12,000 years.

Of course, you have to keep in mind that Pravda is the official mouthpiece of Vladamir Putin and his Russian government, but it is interesting to see this nonetheless.

Can’t help but wonder what this will do to all the European socialists, and those with similar leanings here in the USA, who will have to somehow reconcile two dissonant beliefs – that the Russians are our friends and are always right (while the USA is always wrong), versus the idea that Global Warming is occurring even though the Russians are saying the next Ice Age is almost upon us.

It will be interesting to see if their heads explode with this amazing set of contradictions!

Read the whole story for yourself here.

Was Global warming Disproved in 2008?

Recently I e-mailed some friends a link to a story in The Telegraph
(London, England) by a fellow named Christopher Booker:
Man-made Global Warming Disproved in 2008

One of my friends replied:

Utter nonsense. Christopher Booker has no scientific
credentials whatsoever:
Denialists scraping the bottom

Here is my response (with a few edits and corrections since I first sent it off). What do you think?

Fixing Global Warming?

From the British newspaper – The Times of London.
This article analyzes the potential effects (miniscule)
and costs (enormous) of the current world-wide
plans to reduce global warming.
Why cut .0003 degree in Global Warming?

(Bjorn Lomberg is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist.)

“Hate-Speech” Laws Run Amok

Hi folks –

We all know how great it is to be Americans, with our
core values and the Bill of Rights built into our Constituion.

But over the past 10- 20 years, there has been a steady
drumbeat of people who think we should try to more
closely emulate the example of our European friends,
and their counterparts in Canada.

Unfortunately, these trends seem to have had some unintended
consequences (as do so many well-intentioned gov’t interventions).
In Canada and Europe,  they have completely degraded and in some
cases even eliminated the freedoms we cherish so deeply here
in the USA – freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and in
some cases the freedom of religion as well.

In Canada, the author Mark Steyn has been brought up on
charges by provincial “Human Rights Commisions” because
some Muslims took offense at passages from his book
“America Alone” that was published in the US.
Mark Steyn’s Kangaroo Court prosecution

In another case, Ezra Levant, the publisher of the Weekly
Standard, was put through almost three years of hell
because he decided to reprint the Danish cartoons on
Muhammed in his Canadian newspaper as newsworthy –
to show what was causing all the brouhaha in Denmark:
Weekly Standard prosecution by Human Rights tribunal

And in Canada again, there is the case of the Rev. Stephen
Boisson, a youth pastor, who wrote a letter to the “Red Deer
Advocate” speaking out against the homosexual lifestyle. He’s
been persecuted for years by a human rights commission,
fined, and told he can not speak or write about the topic of
homosexuality ever again, and they ordered him to publish a
letter in the paper renouncing his religious views:
Rev. Stephen Boissoin case – Alberta Human Rights

In fact, before Mark Steyn’s highly publicized case, every
person brought up on “hate speech” charges before  these
Human Rights tribunals was convicted – often in a process that
took years and was not subject to normal rules of evidence or
law.  Kangaroo courts is too kindly a way to describe them.
In this link, you may have to scroll down to Ezra Levants remarks.
Ezra Levants remarks – I am a major crime scene!

And then there is Europe, where the Muslims have been burning
cars and buses in France for years, but the press is only
allowed to call them “unhappy youths” and is not permitted to
mention that they are immigrants or Muslims.
Frank vanHecke  and Vlaams Belang party persecuted

Things have been bad in Holland for a while, but they have
gone completely insane in Belgium.  You need to read  about
how they now use the charge of “racism”:
Bart Debie – former police officer – City councilman

It is unbelievable.- and this form of Euro political correctness
is spreading and gaining currency.

So when Barack Obama spoke before a throng of over 50,000
in Berlin, and speaks approvingly of going in the same direction
and getting on the same page as our friends in Europe, I get
worried.

Our freedomos were very hard-won, but they can be very quickly
eroded, eaten away by the scourge of political correctness and
the temptation to say that no one should ever be “offended”.

I think that the risk of being offended is the price you pay to
live in a free society.  Once the government starts to limit what
you can or can’t say (other than crying “Fire!” in a theater or
inciting to riot), then we have reached the point where we are
no longer free, “1984” has arrived, and we have to worry not only
about what we say, but what we write,  and maybe even what
we think.  Can the “thought police” be far behind?

Pat Acer
November 3, 2008